Category: technology

Have you ever found yourself making the same kinds of edits to text again and again? Many applications offer ways to streamline this process within the confines of the specific application. It gets more challenging when you want to transform text as it moves from one application into another. Keyboard Maestro — the Swiss army knife of Mac automation tools — to the rescue. Today I’ll walk through a couple of ways you can use it to manipulate text in the clipboard before pasting the text into another application. These macros use regular expressions. Regular expressions are a powerful pattern...

A few people have asked me whether you can make ForkLift 3 the default application for file management tasks. You can, but the behavior can be inconsistent between different Macs. Changing this setting will cause applications that have a Reveal in Finder or Open in Finder command to redirect those actions to ForkLift. Commands from applications like Alfred and LaunchBar that display results in a Finder window appear in ForkLift instead. This works for the most part but the behavior isn’t always consistent. Some applications don’t use the operating system default setting and they will continue to do their own...

Before macOS Sierra, Finder had no option to list folders and files separately1. I’m still using El Capitan because of other dependencies and viewing folders mixed in with files really grinds my gears. And I still can’t understand the logic behind using return to rename a file or folder instead of opening it. Fortunately, several third-party Finder replacements have emerged to fill these gaps. Finder alternatives either extend Finder’s native functionality (like XtraFinder and Total Finder) or run as stand-alone applications (like ForkLift and PathFinder). XtraFinder was a capable solution to my gripes for several years. When Apple introduced System...

Jukedeck is a clever tool for creating unique, royalty-free soundtracks. These soundtracks add ambience to your video presentations without sounding like everyone else’s. Jukedeck has added a stack of new features since my earlier review. These additions give you more control over the composition, so the resulting soundtracks match the visuals even better than before. Edit existing compositions This is the one I was waiting for. You can now change your opus after you’ve created it! Before, you had to get everything right the first time. Each composition was a unique snowflake. There were a few times I’d generated the...

Things can change quickly with software. A few weeks back I reviewed Roadmap Planner from KeepSolid. They’ve been hard at work and have just released: Roadmap Planner v2; Roadmap Planner for iOS; a sync service; and a new business model. Roadmap Planner for macOS New features Roadmap Planner v2 fills several gaps I discussed in my earlier review. The export function has taken a big step forward. Version 2 adds JPG and PNG export to version 1’s PDF format. Exporting is more flexible. You can selectively export project bands and nominate a date range if you don’t need the entire...

My day job involves taking the ideas of visionary leaders and turning them into reality. Gantt charts are one of the tools I use to coordinate all the moving parts. As a communication device, a Gantt chart showing the entire project is terrible. Stakeholders will either slip into a catatonic state for the rest of the discussion or suddenly remember they have another meeting to attend. Most stakeholders want to know that someone has thought about all the tasks and interdependencies but have little interest in the detail. Showing the major phases and a few key activities is all you...

“Mind maps — what a load of New Age nonsense.” That was my harsh (and incorrect) assessment the first time I encountered mind mapping. I was an outline guy and didn’t see any reason to change. The technique appeared on my radar often enough for me to accept that there might be something to it. Mind maps have since become an essential tool for planning projects and organizing my ideas. Mind maps start with a central idea. Sub-points and associations radiate from this main point. They are a more visual way of organising information and may employ color, imagery and spatial relationships. Mind mapping...

I’m clearly not the only one who has moments when I’m not sure where (or if) I stashed a task in OmniFocus. The original post generated more interest than I expected. It didn’t seem right that such a handy function should only be available to OmniFocus Pro users. OmniFocus Standard edition users can now join the party too. Edi’s comment on Kourosh Dini’s Using OmniFocus site steered me toward another way of solving the problem. This new approach doesn’t use a custom perspective, so it works in the OmniFocus Standard edition. I started using the custom perspective long before discovering...

Without a tool like OmniFocus, staying on top of my responsibilities would be tough. With hundreds of items active at any time, sometimes things get misplaced. “Haven’t I already created that project? What was I waiting on from David? What else do I need to discuss with him? Who did I lend that Pink Floyd CD to?” Questions like these dictate a comprehensive search before I can answer them. If I’m not exactly sure where I’ve filed a task, I search all remaining tasks instead of rummaging through multiple projects or contexts. This happens several times each day. The manual...

If anyone can make a keyboard that works well with an iPad you’d expect Apple to be the company to pull it off. The Apple Magic Keyboard and iOS combination is more frustrating than magical. Apple hasn’t pulled a rabbit out of a hat, but they have made important functions disappear. Background I’ve struggled to do much writing lately. Other priorities have restricted the time I can put toward it. Much like exercise, writing is a high-inertia activity. It’s easy enough to sustain once you get going, but getting started is hard work. Sometimes a change of scenery is all...